Herbs assortment The Vineries Garden Centre & Nursery

At The Vineries Garden Centre & Nursery in Leatherhead you'll find lots of fresh herbs! Herbs are little powerhouses of scent and flavour, packed with essential oils to turn your cooking from humdrum to haute cuisine in a sprinkle of aromatic green leaves. And they're not just for cooking: add their delicious scents to home-made soaps, bath bags and pot pourris, or harness their medicinal powers for home-grown remedies. Stock up on traditional favourites and take home a few new ones to try from the full range of herbs on sale at your Surrey garden centre.

Most of us use herbs for cooking: grow your own and you can have fresh herbs all year round, adding so much more depth of flavour than dried. Start with the evergreen herbs, like rosemary, sage and bay: one plant of these easy-going evergreens keeps you picking as much as you need, twelve months of the year. Then add a few specialist herbs, like chives, French tarragon for chicken, some mint to make a refreshing tea, or aniseed-flavoured fennel.

Annual herbs are also a must-have, picked by the fistful and torn roughly into salads or scattered fresh and leafy on Mediterranean pasta sauces. Basil, parsley and coriander are incredibly good value sown from seed; alternatively, drop by the garden centre to pick up a pre-sown potful to drop into the garden or fill a pretty container for the patio.

A herb garden shows off your herbs to perfection and allows you to explore new possibilities. Divide it up into two or three areas for culinary, medicinal and cosmetic herbs from The Vineries Garden Centre & Nursery in Leatherhead,and try a few more unusual herbs like lemongrass, summer savory or sweet cicely: it's great fun experimenting with different flavours and scents!

Herbal flavour right outside your back door

Position your herb garden as near to the back door as possible, so you can just pop out and grab your herbs in a moment, as you need them. Herbs are generally compact, so your herb garden doesn't have to be enormous: look out for herb wheels, available in the garden centre here in Leatherhead and divided into sections each for a different herb.

Or choose a selection of small pots from the container department at the garden centre for a potted herb garden: most herbs, except real giants like angelica, thrive in containers in a sunny spot. Then just keep picking them to encourage lots of flavour-packed new growth throughout the season.